Only In America: Civil War by James Philip

Author:James Philip [Philip, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RO:SF
Published: 2018-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 44

Easter Sunday, 10th April 1966

Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant, Warren, Michigan

Notwithstanding it was Easter Sunday the one hundred and thirteen-acre complex was working war shifts day and night producing M60 Patton main battle tanks.

Brigadier Norman H. Schwarzkopf had unhurriedly – because hurrying still hurt a lot and today for once, there was no real ‘hurry’ – climbed up the steps to the elevated walkway around the big assembly shop where lines of new tanks were in various stages of production. Cross lifts rolled and swung turrets and engines across the void inside the vast building, and pneumatic tools whined and hammered without respite.

The Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant (DATP) had been the first factory ever built in the United States specifically designed to mass produce tanks, an integral part of the massive Second World War US re-armament program which had cranked up from 1940 onwards. Theoretically, the facility, the brainchild of architect Albert Kahn, the designer of among other buildings and factories the Detroit News Building, the Packard Automotive Plant, the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House, The Highland Park Ford Plant and the Fisher Building, was planned to be a ‘dual production facility’ which could be switched to peacetime – that is, automobile or truck production – if and when the nation’s need for armaments was assuaged, or the war was over. Chrysler had created the plant out of a green field site in less than a year, producing the first tanks, M3 Lee – the British called it the M3 Grant – tanks even before the plant was officially commissioned.

The US Army had taken over the DATP at one stage only to hand it back to Chrysler in 1952 because, frankly, Chrysler were better at putting together tanks than the US Army; in exactly the same way the US Army was better at fighting wars with the tanks produced in Detroit than the aforementioned company!

Apart from when it was virtually mothballed under the ‘Peace Dividend’ regime of 1963 the plant had been steadily churning out new M60 tanks – officially designated ‘105 mm Gun Full Tracked Combat Tank M60’ - since the end of the 1950s, receiving back M48s and more recently early variant and damaged M60s for extended maintenance, rebuilding and upgrading ever since 1959.

Although his visit was advertised as a morale booster – a publicity stunt organised by the US Army Office of Public Information – Schwarzkopf’s presence in Warren was anything but a flimflam job. He wanted to get his hands dirty and to stick his nose into every corner and inspect every nut and bolt of the M60A1 beasts the DATP was rolling off the production line. The latest models included several modifications fast-tracked into production deriving from lessons learned ‘the hard way’ in Korea, including improved turret drive chains, engine exhaust baffles and marginally heavier frontal glacis armour than earlier variants. Most of all he wanted to sit in the commander’s seat of one of the brand-new monsters and test for himself the supposedly improved gunnery optics and radio suite now being installed as standard in all machines.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.